I think it's weird when people tell other people to go congratulate someone they've never heard of, so don't do that, but I am telling you that if you haven't heard of her--and here, I'm probably not talking to my writer-friends (since most of them have known her better and longer than they've known me, for sure), but my other friends, the ones who like to read, and more specifically, the ones who like to read what I like to read, because her short fiction is good, and you should be as ready for her book as I am so we can talk about it some day, and perhaps give it to each other as a Christmas gift.

(*And not a little bit of me is superpsyched that we have the same agent, because, well, in college, when we all went down to dinner together, someone made a very silly rule that you had to walk with your height buddy, I think because some people of the same height had crushes on each other, but never mind--in any case, because of this conditioning, I have a thing about having a buddy. I have my The Office buddy (sunnydecho) and my speak-dead-languages-when-we're-drunk buddy (iuliamentis) and my we-got-married-in-the-same-year-but-not-to-each-other buddy (mykkel), and now I have a got-the-same-agent-in-the-same-year buddy. So. Thank god for Leah Bobet, 'cause I kinda needed a buddy.)